Sunday, March 18, 2012

Tears In Heaven

Yesterday Tim was DJ at TRACS and he made a
great set of tunes. He found some great songs from the band
Gregorian.

Gregorian is a German band headed by Frank
Peterson that performs Gregorian chant-inspired versions of modern pop and rock
songs. The band features both vocal harmony and instrumental accompaniment.

Band
history

Originally, Gregorian was conceived as a
more pop-oriented group in the vein of Enigma. Under this concept, they
recorded the 1991 album Sadisfaction, with lead vocals provided by The Sisters
of Oz: Susana Espelleta (Peterson's wife at the time) and Birgit Freud.
However, this was the only album in that style.

In 1998, Peterson and his team Jan-Eric
Kohrs, Michael Soltau and Carsten Heusmann re-invented the project to perform
popular songs in the Gregorian style. The criteria for song selection were
strict; in order to be considered, a song needed to be translatable into the
7-tone scale. For each album, songs were carefully chosen in addition to
original songs written by Jan-Eric Kohrs, Amelia Brightman and Carsten
Heussman. Twelve vocalists - previously acclaimed session and choir singers -
were then hired to record the tracks.

Each Gregorian album is initially digitally
tracked at Nemo Studios, Peterson's Hamburg studio.
The vocalists then record their parts in a church atmosphere with dimmed lights
and candles, in order to escape what Peterson referred to in a 2001 interview
as the "cold and technical" studio atmosphere.

The concept proved to be successful, and
the group proceeded to record several more Masters of Chant albums in the same
style. Their 2004 album, The Dark Side, was a slight departure from the others,
featuring a darker repertoire consistent with the title.

At least
once a year, producer Frank Peterson retreats with his headphones to raid his
extensive music collection in the search for new repertoire. It takes a lot of
instinct and inspiration to choose the songs for a project like Gregorian.
"Not every song is suited for the Gregorian sound scale," he
explains, "so the songs have to be chosen very carefully for
Gregorian." Luckily, Peterson's immense music knowledge seems
inexhaustible and there are no limits to his creativity. How else could it be
that we find a Eurythmics ballad next to a Tears For Fears pop tune in the
Gregorian repertoire? Or a Peter Gabriel song next to a Lenny Kravitz rock track?
However, with Gregorian all of this fits in and forms a unit - well-known
melodies in a completely new sound transporting the listener into the timeless
world of Gregorian chant.